Signal Symposium techno-expo provides two-way adventure: online services keep Soldiers 'connected'

Army Communicator, Winter, 2003 by Armando Monroig

During Signal Symposium week, the exhibit tent, located on Chamberlain Avenue across from Signal Towers, was buzzing with energy as vendors displayed their wares to the Signal community.

More than 150 booths were set up to display new Signal technology available to today's military. Two of those were the Army Knowledge Online and the Army homepage website booths.

AKO is the Army's portal on the web, said MAJ Cedric Lee one of the individuals who manned the AKO booth during the symposium.

"Our goal here (at the Signal Symposium) is to insure that Soldiers understand what AKO is about," said Lee. "We also hope to achieve the Chief of Staff's mandate that every Department of the Army Soldier or employee has an AKO account."

He said using AKO is a safe way for Soldiers to stay in contact with their loved ones.

"It is a secure website for Army active, Guard, Reserve and retirees," said Lee.

Lee explained that AKO is a free service that gives every account holder 50 megabytes of storage space on their e-mail account. He said AKO is divided into two areas.

The first area, the portal side, gives the user web preferences.

Lee said it allows the user to customize their own personal web page by doing such things as creating channels to get weather information, track packages and connect to their favorite websites.

"You can customize the portal side to meet your needs," he said. The other side of AKO is the Knowledge Collaboration Center, which allows users to store and share documents, said Lee.

"You can use it for business purposes or for friends and families to share documents," he said. "It's a great service."

The KCC is an application created exclusively for the U.S. Army to allow AKO users to share and collaborate on documents.

From there, Soldiers can upload and download files that will be available from any Internet connection, share files with other AKO users, and create personal and Army Community Knowledge Centers.

They can also subscribe to knowledge centers to gain access to Army community information and search for documents using keyword searches. There is an Inside AKO tab that allows users to get additional information they might need about AKO.

Lee explained there are four Army Knowledge Management memorandums that were signed by the Chief of Staff of the Army and the Secretary of the Army.

"Memo number one directed that all Army personnel would have an AKO account," he said. "And that AKO would be the Army's portal."

Not only is AKO a great service to Soldiers, but it is also financially sound because it saves the Army millions of dollars, said Lee.

The Army accomplishes this by consolidating servers and reducing the number of applications used in the Army, which was the objective of memorandum number two, said Lee.

"If everybody has an AKO web account, then it reduces the number of servers, administrators and the overhead required on each installation to support web service," said Lee.

Aside from being cost effective, Lee said AKO gives managers the ability to reach out and contact their Soldiers, subordinates or peers at any time with features such as instant messaging.

"So no matter where you are in the world, if you have access to the Internet, and you have a browser on your PC, AKO is available," said Lee.

The last two memorandums focus on personnel structure and how to serve them better, and logistics, said Lee.

He said part of their goal for being at the Symposium was to get feedback from AKO users.

Lee said his team was also at the symposium to lend help to individuals who already have an AKO account and educate them on things they may not have already known or answer questions they might have.

For instance he said many people don't know that their family members can get an AKO account. He wanted to inform the retired military population that this service was available to them as well.

"AKO is pretty much a one-stop-shop," said Lee. "You can find just about anything you want in AKO."

He said if you can't find information in AKO you can access it through AKO by using one of the 240-plus links to external applications available to users.

Soldiers can find just about any information pertaining to them on their AKO account such as dental or medical readiness information, said Lee. He said Soldiers can also schedule dental and medical appointments online.

Soldiers can use AKO to help enhance their military career by going to the "My Education" link for additional information on on-line courses, he explained.

Lee added Soldiers can further their education, manage finances and even see if they are deployable by using AKO.

"There is a common misunderstanding that AKO is just mail," said Lee. "It is more than just mail."

The purpose of AKO was to give the Army an intranet, said Harold Tucker, a systems architect for AKO. He said AKO was activated more than two years ago and that about 1.6 million people have signed up with AKO.

"The desire is to have every application that a Soldier, retiree or Department of Defense employee needs on AKO so that they can get to it," said Tucker.